The Void Elves Need a Moment in the Spotlight

Let's go down the list of existing and confirmed Allied Races:

Lightforged Draenei
Void Elves
Nightborne
Highmountain Tauren
Dark Iron Dwarves
Mag'har Orcs
Kul Tiran Humans
Zandalari Trolls

The first four were, of course, released as a bridge between Legion and Battle for Azeroth (in a kind of Ruby Sanctum patch,) and their stories are tied to Legion. Mag'har Orcs (particularly this group of them) were the main subject of Warlords of Draenor, and Dark Iron Dwarves were actually a somewhat large presence in vanilla WoW and have popped up more since Cataclysm saw them inducted as an NPC race (like the High Elves) within the Alliance. Kul Tirans and Zandalari are, of course, about to be center stage for the next expansion.

But to narrow in on this post's actual subject, if we take a look at the currently live Allied Races, we can see how three of them were fairly prominent in Legion. Highmountain had a zone dedicated to its local Tauren tribes, and Suramar had a lengthy narrative about the Nightborne fighting a civil war to rid the city of its Legion collaborators.

Despite having a few characters with names, I felt they didn't do as good of a job establishing personalities among the Lightforged Draenei as they did with the Highmountain or Nightborne, given that the most prominent Lightforged character on Argus was actually Turalyon, a human.

But until we actually got them as a playable race, the Void Elves didn't really have any presence in-game. Our only possible example was Alleria, but her story ran in parallel with the Void Elves until they became playable. As far as we knew, Alleria was unique in her studies of the Void. Indeed, even at this point, Alleria doesn't have the blue skin or dark hair of other Void Elves, suggesting she went through a totally different process.

Essentially, outside of the unlock quest chain, Void Elves have no real presence in the world.

But there is a ton of potential to their story.

First off, while we've had Shadow Priests in WoW since vanilla, we haven't really had any other examples of heroes who use the Void. Void Elves aren't a class - they're a race - which means that Void Elves have a society of their own, with an emerging culture and presumably there are Void Elf civilians. (Maybe - to be fair, it might be that, like the Lightforged, simply becoming one of these guys sort of puts you in a separate category than civilian. Interesting that the two existing Alliance allied races are composed of people who started as other races.)

The Void Elves give us an opportunity to see what it's like to live with the Void at all times. A Shadow Priest can theoretically turn off their Shadowform and live like a normal person when they're not out adventuring, but a Void Elf has made it part of their being. What is that like?

Then, of course, we have to consider the fact that Void Elves are also High Elves. There's a ton of story in there as well. The High Elves were, of course, one of the original Alliance races. When the Scourge ravaged Quel'thalas, they changed their name to the Blood Elves, after which they left the Alliance and would later join the Horde, teaming up with the Forsaken to fight the Scourge. But as many problems they might have had with human leaders like Garithos, people like Garrosh were hardly any better, and as we learned in Mists, there was a brief moment when Lor'themar was considering dumping the Horde and re-joining the Alliance.

The Void Elves were exiled from Silvermoon for their shadowy experiments - something many Void Elves would probably consider hypocritical, given the Blood Elves' historic use of Fel magic - and this has given them the opportunity to follow through on the deal that fell through between Varian and Lor'themar.

That means that the Alliance now has its own natives to Quel'thalas again (yes, they had High Elves, but Blizzard has always maintained that the fraction of High Elves who didn't become Blood Elves is very small.) Given that Undercity is due to be destroyed tomorrow, and the Alliance is going to have a commanding presence throughout the Eastern Kingdoms (especially when the Dark Irons officially join,) this means that they've neutralized the home field advantage the Blood Elves might have had in a potential invasion (though I wouldn't be surprised if the Alliance takes a "we don't attack you, you don't attack us" strategy toward Quel'thalas.)

On top of that, the Void Elves might have much keener insight into the workings of the Old Gods, as fellow Void-based beings. Might the Ren'dorei be able to learn enough about the Old Gods that they could actually find a safe way to excise or neutralize them?

So there's a lot of potential there. Still, the main reason to give them time in the spotlight is that, unlike all the other allied races, the Void Elves have basically no presence in-game. We don't even know their general character. Are they going to be the Alliance's answer to the Forsaken as the "token evil team member?" or are they just emo elves? And aside from the ruins of that planet that Sargeras cut in half, do they have a home? Are they trying to re-take Quel'thalas, and if not, do they want to?

There are so many unanswered questions here, and if we're going to have them around (which we do, of course,) what role are they going to play in the larger world?